The Flute-Player

BY PURASU BALAKRISHNAN

(Translated from Tamil by the Author)

(1)

I remember it as though it were only yesterday. It was at a wedding celebrated at some magnate’s somewhere. My Master had been invited there to give a performance on the flute. As luck would have it, I had accompanied him on that occasion.

The day after our performance, the magnate took it into his head to get up a Gesture-Dance. If one has money to please one’s fancy with, what cannot one do?……It was at that Dance that I lost my young heart to a maiden.

Her name was Ratnambal. It was my good fortune that she also happened to come there. The magnate tried all he could to make my Master play to her Dance. But it was in vain. My Master would never consent to suffer that indignity. Even today I cannot understand why he should have been so stubborn. In his opinion, nothing more disgraceful could befall a musician of repute than to play to a woman, and that to a dancing-girl.

For my part I had no such ideas or scruples. Music was my profession; and I would let no opportunity slip by when I could demonstrate my talent. As the saying goes, why reject the Goddess Lakshmi when she comes to you of her own accord? And so I asked the rich man if I would be permitted to play in place of my Master.

At this my Master flew all into a flutter. That very night he left the place for home. I stayed behind.

The next day the Gesture-Dance came off. It was the most blessed day of my life.

To a vast and breathless audience Ratnambal rendered ‘Abhinaya’ and danced ‘Bharata Natya,’ while I accompanied her on the flute.

They spoke very flatteringly of our performance that day. They said that the ‘Natya’ was matched only by the Flute, and the Flute only by the ‘Natya.’ But I knew nothing of this. Ratnambal too knew nothing. How could we know anything indeed, when we had forgotten ourselves entirely?

At that time I thought: "The Soul of Music is Bhava (emotion); while ‘Abinaya’ and ‘Natya’ constitute ‘Bhava’ itself. And so, how vitally sustaining are Music and Dancing to each other! To sever one from the other is impossible. Without the one the other will not grow. How wonderful! Is not the bond which unites me and Ratnambal the same as that which unites our Arts too?" And I was pleased with the thought.

So wonderful indeed did this union of our souls appear to me that I could hardly keep the thought to myself and I must needs share it with Ratnambal. It was a new wave swelling and surging within me.

But on that very day I had become removed from my Master. Even at the time of his death he did not forgive me. He died two months after this incident. May his soul find peace in Heaven, which had not found love on earth!

(2)

I am not one of those who affect false humility with regard to themselves. I do rate my talent highly as a flute-player. Like my Master I also regard myself with dignity and even with pride. But all these feelings, and the root of all these, namely that high consciousness ‘I,’ I discarded completely and surrendered to Ratnambal. To her I dedicated my body soul, and talent, and everything mine. How many would have known the heart-searchings and the heavings and the tumults of the mind which this surrender meant? Let me but repeat that though I consider myself to be a servant of my Art, I am far from being humble. I am proud–rather too proud–of my talent. And yet for her sake I stifled all feelings of self-assertion, and curbed my over-soaring spirit in being but an accompanist to her. Of all his pupils my Master had set the highest opinion and the greatest hope on me. Indeed, on many occasions, he had expressed this quite plainly and openly. Under such good auspices did I enter the arena of Music; and I won the almost immediate regard of the public. My mind continually rebelled against me, prompting me to endeavour to be, just like my Master, a single sun in a spacious sky unequalled and supreme. When at last I did begin my career in music anew, driven thither by a malicious Fate, the seal of approval which the public set on my talent for music, showed that my former opinion of myself was true. And yet, for nearly one year, I remained an unknown accompanist to Ratnambal.

(3)

I had been accompanist to her for not more than six months when my troubles began. Cough and sputum, and in the sputum, blood. I was told that it was tuberculosis. Till then Ratnambal and I had been very loving indeed. The days had passed by like a dream of pure delight. Ah, happy blissful days! What fondness, what endearment, what gay words which flowed endlessly! ‘Abhinaya’ and Song reigned supreme in the house. Coquettishly, in her hand she would take mine, as though it were a parrot, and wonder what exquisite melody could flow from those finger-tips, when they danced on the bamboo…...

I was then twenty and she was seventeen. She was a divinely beautiful woman, beautiful to perfection…..while I fell into the clutches of an ugly disease. It was a mean trick played on me by Fate, a cruel trick.…..

When she learnt that I had caught tuberculosis, a change came upon her. Was it dread? Only then we had agreed to get married. But now she said: "Why hurry? Certainly your health is much more important just now than marriage. And so you must take the utmost care of your health. Please do. After all, the marriage can wait." And thus she almost sent me away to attend to my health. However, I continued to be accompanist to her for three months more. But within that time, my disease developed rapidly. The doctors said that to continue playing on the flute would be merely beating and tearing the diseased lungs to pieces. They said that one might as well yoke a diseased horse to a cart and goad it on. Ratnambal had told me the same thing even earlier. And so I not could not play on the flute any longer.

I left Ratnambal and returned to my place. For one year I lay bed-ridden with my disease. Twelve long months. And all the time Ratnambal never came to see me; no, not once. Even after I had got over the disease, the doctors said that I should have complete rest for six months more, and that never there-after should I exert myself unduly or play on the flute. All my ideals and aspirations, and all the innermost longings of my soul, tumbled down in a moment, like a house of cards.

(4)

For one year and a half after I had left Ratnambal, I dragged out a weary existence, one lifeless day following another in dull succession. And then I went to see her myself, unbidden. My mind which had already been broken, split now into a hundred pieces. What a change! Oh, that I never knew that change like this could come over people! But why blame her? What can come out of that? I must blame only myself. I must bemoan only my fate. Why did that cursed disease come upon me at such an early age? Or, having come upon me, why did it not kill me at once? Why did it spare me, now that she holds me like an untouchable? In her eyes, it is pity which I discern–and also a dread which makes them strangely tremulous. How can I hereafter speak to her of love, or breathe soft words to her? Even when I took leave of her saying, "I go to come again,"¹ she did not offer me one little word of consolation. Before that form of splendid loveliness, I who had been emaciated into a stick, found it painful to stand any longer, and I returned home, an utterly broken man.

The next day some old woman came seeking me, with a letter for me. It was the last blow, and it fell right on my head. The very thing I had dreaded, happened. The letter was from Ratnambal. She had written to me that she was deeply sorry for me, but that only a feeling of pity for me entered her mind, and nought else did; that she had not been able to bring herself to speak out her mind to me in person on the previous day; and that now, like one who had done some grievous wrong, she was trying to hide herself behind a letter; and that with tears in her eyes, she now wrote that she could not marry me. I read the letter mechanically, dead to everything around me. After I had finished the letter, when I turned round, the old woman was not there. She had disappeared so promptly. I was to be denied even the least chance for one last word! Helplessly I tore the letter to pieces and flung the bits away. But my mind which had been shattered into a hundred fragments, remained as disconsolate as ever.

(5)

Thereafter life lost all its savour for me. A new spirit of apathy and renunciation seized me. The doctors had warned me that to play on the flute would be certain death to me. But now anger and bitterness arose in me towards them. What was my life now worth? What could be its meaning or its purpose hereafter? It was just like the rag which we throw away in our homes to cleanse the ground with. Yes, no more than a discarded rag! There was nothing now to tempt me to live. The world had lost its very meaning for me. What did it matter whether I lived or died?

I took out my flute again from its dainty little box where it had been reposing silently till then. I moistened my lips, one with the other, and poising the flute on my fingers, I began to play. And as in the olden times came the first three notes "Sa-Pa-Sa." But beyond that I could not go. Overpowering tears, streaming down from my eyes, made me weak and helpless like a woman. Unable to play anything at all, I laid the flute aside and flung myself into my bed. But my sorrow rose again like a lump into my throat. And I simply hugged the flute to my breast, overcome by an infinite melancholy and regret at the thought that I had been obliged to give it up so long. I felt even like a mother who, having lost her child, comes upon it at last and hugs it to her breast with a renewed love which bursts through her tears……

At last with a spirit of vairagya I resolved to offer a brave challenge to Fate. I threw myself once more arduously into the musician’s life. I gave a number of performances which brought me my reputation. I won the praise which is dear to every pupil, that I was worthy of my Master, and thus I kept unsullied his fair name.

For five years I careered triumphantly in the realm of music. All these years, music was my only consolation, the only life-giving power for me. Sometimes I would laugh like a mad man–"Koo koo!"–and with the flute in my hand exclaim, "Aie, you Demon of Disease! You unwanted, ill-natured thing! Do you think you can get at me through my flute? No, I tell you, it is impossible, you fool! Chich-chi! Get away! Know then, my flute is in fact my sole weapon against you! It is my medicine, my panacea, my nectar! Get away, you Idiot Disease! Dare you stand before my flute still?–Hm, you are a miserable fool! Be-gone, be-gone at once!" and I would flourish the flute in a frenzy, as though it were Bhima’s mace, imagining the Demon before me. But the next moment, I would check myself, frightened at the thought, "Am I getting wrong in my mind too?"

During these five years I had given numberless performances. But only one, from among them all, stands out fresh and clear in my memory still. So deeply has it sunk into my soul.

It was the middle of that performance and it was the violinist’s turn. Keeping the time for him with my hands, I turned to his side to cheer him. My eyes stayed where they turned, motionless and immovable. There, on that side, near me, sat my Ratnambal. Yes, it was Ratnambal herself, sitting there!

My heart throbbed at once within me and brimmed over with silent red drops of sorrow. I laid the flute to my lips again and began to play. And the song came gushing forth, like a cascade, flowing irresistibly. And I forgot the song completely, and I forgot myself too. And yet, wonderfully, the strains flowed on. The chest heaved and swelled to the rushing air, the lips kissed and hung on the flute, the fingers played and danced on the bamboo, like birds with lives of their own; and the melody of the flute flowed and filled the entire hall. But my mind was not with these things…….

I remembered only that long-past night when I, left helpless and loveless and broken-hearted, wept like a woman, shedding tears, hugging the flute to my breast. All else was forgotten. And only that night of utter anguish and agony came to my mind. For that alone was reality to me, the rest was all illusion, mere illusion…..

In the Sabha too, as had happened on, that night, tears poured down helplessly from my eyes. It did not occur to me that, in the glare of the electric lights, the audience would certainly perceive those drops running down my cheeks. But those tears washed my grief away somewhat and soothed me a little. Strangely and wonderfully, when I had shed those tears, an unknown calm came glowing down upon me; and it appeared to me as if those tears had washed some rust off my mind, making it peculiarly roomy and bright......

(7)

I had a dream that night. Oh God, would that I could spend my whole life in that dream! This yearning consumes me utterly! That night, as I lay in sorrow on my bed, she who came to the performance, came to my side to weep. She shed piteous tears, bewailing her cruelty; she implored and begged me to forgive her and to accept her. But in my sad heart was a firmness too. What a miserable fate was mine! She loved not me; she loved only my flute. How could this give peace to my soul; how could this bring solace to my full and deep love? Oh God, could she not love me for my love, and not for my music?….Though I had such thoughts as these in my mind, when she came there of her own accord, and stood before me with tears in her eyes, madly I gathered her in my arms and embraced her, with a love burning and leaping like fire……Again tears rose into my eyes. How weak of heart and tearful by nature–like a woman–I had become, I thought. At this I opened my eyes–and found no Ratnambal by my side. There was nobody there, none in the room; I was there alone, lying on my bed; and on me lay my flute; and it was the flute I was hugging to my breast, not Ratnambal……..

1 The conventional leave-taking.